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JOURNEYS; Lost Weekend: F. Scott and Budd Go to Dartmouth

STEPPING into the Hanover Inn in Hanover, N.H., is like entering a Dartmouth-themed time capsule. The inn is directly across Wheelock Street from Dartmouth College's main lawn and its guest room floors are covered in ''Dartmouth green'' carpeting. An 1853 front page from The Dartmouth Advertiser and The Literary Gazette hangs behind the registration desk, and a plaque proudly salutes the class of 1945.

On a frigid January morning, looking north through the window in Room 302, I could see the colonial-style spire of Baker Library across the street, silently dominating the lawn, called the Green. The campus was not yet awake and only the sight of an occasional student, wrapped up tightly against the cold, trudging across the snow-stacked campus, disrupted the stillness.

This, I thought, was probably what F. Scott Fitzgerald saw when he stayed at the inn 64 years ago, in Hanover to attend Dartmouth's famed Winter Carnival.

Or it would have been if he hadn't been dead drunk at the time.

This weekend, for the 93rd year -- excepting a few war years -- Dartmouth will stage Winter Carnival. Since its inception, thousands of visitors have trekked to this tiny New Hampshire town for the event, a celebration that originally combined one part athletic competition, one part beauty pageant and one part undergraduate bacchanal. But perhaps no pilgrim has been so famously regarded as the author of ''Tender Is the Night'' and ''The Great Gatsby,'' whose 1939 visit -- one that began in fanfare and ended in disgrace -- has become the stuff of legend.

During its heyday, from the mid-1920's through the 1960's, Winter Carnival was the focal point of the undergraduate social season -- strong evidence that, as Fitzgerald wrote in ''The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,'' ''everybody's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.'' The festival was created in 1911 by Fred Harris, the undergraduate founder of the Dartmouth Outing Club, as a series of sporting competitions for snow-logged students. But before long it took on another purpose -- an excuse to invite women to the all-male campus.

In 1923, the college held its first ''Queen of the Snows'' competition, a pageant that soon became an obsession for undergraduate socialites and their followers, and a national media event. By the 1930's, over a thousand women regularly overwhelmed the tiny town. ''Hanover is set back on its collective heels as girls, girls, girls pour in,'' screamed the Feb. 10, 1939, edition of The Dartmouth, the school's daily newspaper.

But that year, in addition to the debutantes from Radcliffe and Barnard, the campus played host to a group of visitors from Hollywood. Fitzgerald and the writer Budd Schulberg, a recent Dartmouth graduate, had been hired by the producer Walter Wanger, then working for United Artists, to develop a script based on the celebration.

It was Fitzgerald's latest attempt at a professional comeback. It had been five hard years since the publication of ''Tender Is the Night,'' and he had spent them battling alcoholism, attempting -- and largely failing -- to jump start a screenwriting career, and occasionally writing self-lacerating confessionals for Esquire magazine.

By the time the pair disembarked from the Winter Carnival Special train from New York, Fitzgerald had already been drunk for about 24 hours, according to Mr. Schulberg. Unaware of the author's alcoholism, Mr. Schulberg's father had presented the travelers with two bottles of Mumm Champagne for their flight from Burbank. In New York, Fitzgerald had snuck out to a bar. And somehow, Mr. Schulberg recalled during a phone interview last month, Fitzgerald was able to procure liquor on the train as well. During the whole visit, Fitzgerald maintained a constant state of unproductive inebriation, much to the dismay of Wanger, who attended the festivities as well.

''Walter Wanger had arranged for the head of the English department and some of the top people there to meet with us and hear our projection of story lines for the film,'' Mr. Schulberg said. ''Both of us looked disreputable. I don't think, honestly, we'd changed our clothes since we'd left the airplane. And on top of all the other drinking, a favorite sociology professor of mine was a huge fan of Fitzgerald's, and so to celebrate, at a moment when I was trying to taper Scott off, he came to the room with a bottle of whiskey and it all started all over again.''

The two never achieved sobriety and worked little. When pressed, Fitzgerald would launch into rambling memories, Mr. Schulberg said, or instigate a discussion of the character of the new generation of college undergraduates. On Saturday night, after visiting parties at the Alpha Delta Phi and Psi Upsilon fraternity houses, they returned to the inn in yet another earnest attempt to start work on their screenplay.

''We went down to the coffee shop to try to sober up,'' Mr. Schulberg said. ''We went around from the back where the coffee shop was to the front steps of the inn, and there was Walter Wanger, looking immaculate and 10 feet tall. And when he saw us, his words were, 'I don't know when the next train out of here is, but you two boys are going to be on it.' '' The two men returned to New York, where, with no hotel and with Fitzgerald running a 104-degree fever, they checked into Doctors Hospital. Fitzgerald stayed there for three days before returning to Hollywood.

Mr. Schulberg was later rehired and the resulting film, ''Winter Carnival'' starring Ann Sheridan, was released later that year, to mixed reviews. Mr. Schulberg went on to write the screenplay to ''On the Waterfront'' as well as the best-selling novels ''What Makes Sammy Run?'' and ''The Disenchanted,'' a fictional recreation of his Winter Carnival weekend with Fitzgerald.

TODAY, the coffee shop where Fitzgerald and Mr. Schulberg valiantly sought sobriety no longer stands; a Simon Pearce crafts store and a Gap occupy its space. Their guest room, a dingy attic space when Fitzgerald and Mr. Schulberg stayed there, was renovated along with the rest of the hotel in 1966. And instead of being overwhelmed by snow-crazed alumni and families eager to peruse the snow-dotted campus, the Hanover Inn still has rooms available for Winter Carnival weekend. Indeed, the town -- and even many students -- are greeting this year's celebration with a shrug.

''It's not as big of an event for outside people as it was in the old days,'' said Matt Marshall, general manager of the Hanover Inn. ''The carnival's changed.''

Indeed, the last Queen of the Snows was crowned in 1972 -- the year the school began admitting women -- and other customs have come and gone since then. Students no longer pack an auditorium for a screening of ''Winter Carnival'' on Friday night. The Psi Upsilon fraternity won't be the host of a keg-jumping competition this year, a ritual begun in 1982 in which drunken, skate-wearing contestants vaulted themselves over an increasing number of beer kegs. (After a contestant completed a jump, naturally, he downed a shot.) The contest was discontinued in 2001 over safety and liability concerns. And it is unlikely that, if Fitzgerald were to visit today, he'd get his hands on quite so much Psi Upsilon liquor. Outsiders -- and under-age students -- have a much tougher time today drinking to excess at fraternity parties.

''We have to have food, like chips, or nonalcoholic drinks, wristbands and door monitors,'' said Patrick McCarthy, social events manager of Dartmouth's Greek Leader Council. ''There's a ratio of how much we're allowed to have as far as alcohol. One drink per person of age per hour.''

Still, Winter Carnival will soldier on this year. Over the weekend, students will be able to watch races and take advantage of discounted lift tickets at the Dartmouth Skiway and compete in interdormitory snow-sculpture contests. The truly masochistic can try the Polar Bear Swim, a chilly dip in the campus's ice-covered pond that usually draws 250 participants. And as in years past, Dartmouth's Green will be the site of an enormous snow sculpture, reflective of the weekend's theme. This year's, inspired by ''The Lord of the Rings,'' is ''One Carnival to Rule Them All.''

Winter Carnival, though, may never achieve the position it once had. Like Fitzgerald himself by the late 1930's, it has come to be seen as the creation of a bygone era. ''There was nothing like it almost anywhere,'' Mr. Schulberg said. ''There was a sexual revolution going on. And for the girls -- as we called them then -- it was a big honor to be invited. There was enormous excitement in the air. It was romantic, really, in the old-fashioned sense. It's still what you'd call a party, but it's nothing like it was back then.''

Still, perseverance in the face of faded glory can carry its own brand of dignity, as Fitzgerald's experience proves. Only months after his disastrous weekend, and despite deteriorating health, he began working on a comeback. ''I have a novel pretty well on the road,'' he wrote in a letter to a friend in September 1940 as Europe was falling to Nazi Germany. ''The new Armageddon, far from making everything unimportant, gives me a certain lust for life again.'' He died of a heart attack three months later. In October 1941, that unfinished novel, ''The Last Tycoon,'' was published. It is often described as one of the best books ever written about Hollywood.

Mr. Schulberg was visiting Hanover again and was leaning against the outside wall of the Hanover Inn when he heard the news that Fitzgerald had died. A few weeks earlier, he had visited Fitzgerald and seen some of his final work. ''It was the end of the day and he looked weary, for the writing didn't come so easy anymore,'' he wrote in the March 3, 1941, issue of The New Republic. ''It was a page a day, but a good page. . . .''

HANOVER, N.H., is a five-hour drive from New York City. Take Interstate 95 North to Interstate 91 in New Haven. Take 91 North through Connecticut and Massachusetts, and continue until Exit 13 in Vermont. Take Route 10A through two traffic lights.

At this year's Winter Carnival, ski races begin at 9:30 a.m. today and the same time tomorrow at the Dartmouth Skiway (603-795-2143), and last into the afternoon. The events are free for spectators and open to the public. On Saturday from noon to 3 p.m., there is a town party at Occom Pond with ice fishing, sleigh rides and a marching band concert. Information is available by calling Dartmouth at (603) 646-1110.

Although there are more than 50 lodging options in the area surrounding Dartmouth, the only one in Hanover with vacancies as of this week was the Hanover Inn (2 Main Street, 603-643-4300). Rooms are $257 to $307.